Optimize Adblock Filter List

The filter list of Adblock plus contains the websites that you do not want to block ads on. This can be due to several reasons. You might be a webmaster who wants to make sure that ads are running correctly on his system and also find out which ads are running on it or you might have troubles viewing a rich media site if you do not add the site to the filter list.

Whatever the reasons may be, the filter list can be problematic especially if you take duplicate entries into consideration. The Adblock Filter List Optimizer changes that by optimizing the filter list by removing duplicates and reducing the number of lines and words contained in the filter list.

Just head over to the Adblock Website, export your filter list in Firefox and paste it into the form there. Click on optimize and you should see the results just a second later. Import the filter list again after saving it in a text file and overwrite the old one in the process.

Better Javascript Control

Firefox without add-ons allows to enable or disable Javascript. If you uninstall the popular Noscript you can enable Javascript on trusted websites and disable it on all other websites. If you want a better Javascript control in Firefox you could take a look at the Firefox add-on Controle de Scripts which gives you a much deeper control of what Javascript may do and may not do.

The Firefox add-on has basically two tabs that control certain Javascript functions. The main tab is called Permissions and you can allow or disallow functions like resizing windows, changing images, hiding scrollbars or the bookmarks toolbar here. The second tab is Popups which defines which Javascript events are allowed to open popups.

Knowledge of Javascript events is needed to configure this properly, you could use Google to search for the Javascript events as well . You might be saying that you don’t want any popups but you might consider that some websites open new pages in a popup after submitting a form or clicking on a link.

Unplug for Firefox

Unplug is a Firefox add-on that is very similar to the Download Helper extension that I have been writing about before on this website. It scans a website for video, audio and other multimedia content and provides direct download links to those files. Many users that I know use Unplug to download flash games from websites to be able to play them offline.

The process is as simple as it can be. Download and install the extension and restart Firefox afterwards. Now right-click the top toolbar in a free space and select customize from the menu. You have to locate the Unplug icon and drag and drop it into the toolbar. If you do not want to do this you can access Unplug from the Tools menu as well.

Unplug opens a new page listing all media files. Sometimes more than one file is listed on that page but it is normally quite easy to find the real one. Once that is done just click on save to save the file locally. This can be used on many games sites and I suspect also on video and audio websites.

Firefox Open Bookmarks in new Tabs

This is something that is really bothering me in Firefox. All the bookmarks are opening in the currently active tab and I prefer them to open in a new tab instead. There is apparently no option to change this behavior in Firefox which is not very user friendly if you ask me.

Thankfully though a click with the middle mouse button is loading the selected bookmark in a new tab. I have to get used to this and I happen to forget about this even after months of using it. Nothing is worse than opening a bookmark in the tab were you are writing an article because that article, or at least part of it, gets lost when this happens.

I know that there are extensions, I think Tab Mix Plus does it, that add this functionality but I recently cut down on extensions that I’m using to make Firefox more memory friendly. If you know of another way, config setting that is, please let me know.

Mozilla Firefox Live Chat Support

The Mozilla Firefox forum and knowledgebase is already an excellent way to receive support if you are facing troubles with Firefox. I was able to solve more than one problem this way in short time. Mozilla recently introduced a new possibility that is even better because you get support (almost) in realtime.

The Firefox Live Chat Support is run by volunteers who know then ins and outs of Firefox and can help with almost any issue that you might be facing. What I really like is that the waiting time before you are connected to an agent is slim to none most of the time. Once the chat is loaded you can have a friendly chat with a support representative who is friendly and takes his time to chat with you.

I’m used to fast calls or chats when talking to representatives normally and this is a welcome difference. A test that I conducted revealed that they, or at least the agent that I was chatting with, knew a lot about Firefox. The agent did not just copy and paste knowledgebase articles but tried to explain everything in common words.

Introducing the Firefox Error Console

Did you know that there is an error console in Firefox ? You can access it by clicking on Tools > Error_Console. The Error Console of Firefox opens in a new window and lists errors, warnings and messages that are related to web pages that the user loads and User Chrome.

It reports JavaScript-related errors and warnings, CSS errors and arbitrary messages from chrome code

It can be helpful in three ways. The first is if you are a webmaster and want to make sure that the code on your website is working fine in Firefox. You visit the website then and check the Error Console to see if there are any errors or warnings that are related to your website.

There is always information about the type of error or warning and the location of the file that was involved. Another possibility is for users who have troubles opening a website in Firefox. They could probably, with some knowledge, find out why the website is not displaying properly in Firefox.

Download Helper Extension

I had great success in downloading content from video portals using the excellent Grab++ application that is part of Orbit Downloader. That is, until I came to a website that did not allow me to download the videos even though Grab++ was running. To explain it a bit further, Grab++ is observing the Internet traffic and lists links that meet certain criteria such as videos.

I began my research and stumbled upon the Firefox extension Download Helper which supports lots of sites, several hundred would be my estimation. The site list is divided into normal video sites and adult video sites. The process however is the same.

Once you install Download Helper it will add a icon in one of your toolbars. If you can’t find the icon you need to right-click a toolbar and select customize from that menu. Then drag and drop the icon to one of your toolbars.

Find As You Type

I use the Firefox keyboard shortcut CTRL + F quite a lot when I try to find a phrase on a large website. While I was browsing through the about:config items I discovered an interesting option that made my life easier. The settings are called Type Ahead Find and what they do is to start popping up the find box when you start typing chars on an active website.

Don’t worry this function is only available when you are not typing into a form on the website. The key is called accessibility.typeaheadfind and is set to false by default. The Find As You Type function becomes available as soon as you set it to true.

There are several other entries that change the behavior of Find As You Type in Firefox. I would like to explain them all in the following short list.

RIP Netscape ! Recommends Firefox

AOL has finally decided to get rid of Netscape and lay it to rest in the beginning of next year. Netscape was once a huge competitor to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which changed when Microsoft decided to integrate Internet Explorer into Windows. There was no way – at that time – to break this unfair advantage and the better browser suddenly lost huge market shares.

The final blog post at the official Netscape blog is answering some frequently asked questions about this decision and recommends to use Firefox with the Netscape theme and extensions instead.

I’m not sure why but I always thought of Firefox as a worthy successor of the Netscape browser. And it seems that the time is right to break the marketing domination with a free and better browser. It is a sad day nevertheless.

Faster Firefox Download Process ?

Lifehacker posted an article letting us know that there was a way to Speed Up the Firefox Download Process by dragging and dropping the download instead of right-clicking and selecting Save As from the menu. I’m a bit puzzled by this article and have my problems accepting their conclusion.

First of all, drag and drop does not work for all websites. If a script handles the download you can’t drag and drop that to the download icon (which you most likely have to add using the customize feature). Second, not all downloads have to be right-clicked and Saved As.

Firefox offers a very distinctive way of selecting an action for file-types. You can choose to save certain file-types, like pdf, doc or avi to the hard drive which means that whenever you left-click them they will be saved to the hard drive instantly.

What do you think, is that a way of speeding up the download process ?